Rotel @ 4 ohm

[janmike]

I am thinking about upgrading my HT system from Polk Audio RTi series to the LSi series. Currently I am driving my RTi's with a Rotel 1080 for the front and a Yamaha RX-V1500 for the rears and centre. The LSi's that I am looking at run at 4 ohm nominal impedance. How does the 1080 run at 4 ohm. I would also like to beef up the power for the other 3 speakers (rears & centre) so would dumping the 1080 and looking for a 1095 be my best option. This would give me adequate power all round. Thanks Folks. :lol:

[Clepto]

Might want to consider the 1077, which would then also allow you to migrate to a 7 speaker system later.

[janmike]

I had 7.1 point and eliminated 2 speakers. I do prefer 5.1. Anyway, can the 1080 drive speakers at 4 ohm?

[aud19]

The 1080 should have no problems at 4 ohms :T

[janmike]

Thanks Jason. Any idea of the watts at 4 ohm?

[aud19]

Thanks Jason. Any idea of the watts at 4 ohm?

I believe it's at or just north of 300W

[janmike]

According to Andrew Shaw at Rotel, the 1080 could reach power of 350 into 4 ohms.

[Souwalker]

I am running th rb1080 with 4ohm speakers.
No problem.
pat

[janmike]

What speakers are you running?

[Souwalker]

What speakers are you running?

Magnat Sigma 900 series.
Old speakers but man do they sound sweet

Pat

[sarsi]

I tried driving my Dynaudio Audience 4ohms home theater speakers system with Rotel RMB 1095 can feel it is absolutely effortless. 1080 have the same rating as the 1095 for two channels, shouldn't have much problem but for your rear and center you may want to consider adding a RMB1075. A little overkill to buy a 1095 to drive the rear and center, but again why not if you have the spare cash and may be in the future you can move the 1080 to a stereo setup and let the 1095 do the home theater job.

[JDH]

I'm also using the RB-1080 with Whatmough P32 4ohm floorstanding speakers, no problems.

I am running th rb1080 with 4ohm speakers.
No problem.
pat

[Stevebez]

I would use the 1080 and 1095 for a 7.1 system eventually.

Rgds Steve.

[Dmantis]

I tried driving my Dynaudio Audience 4ohms home theater speakers system with Rotel RMB 1095 can feel it is absolutely effortless. 1080 have the same rating as the 1095 for two channels, shouldn't have much problem but for your rear and center you may want to consider adding a RMB1075. A little overkill to buy a 1095 to drive the rear and center, but again why not if you have the spare cash and may be in the future you can move the 1080 to a stereo setup and let the 1095 do the home theater job.

Same here. Actually I used to own the full Lsi series home theater system. I'm currently running 4 ohm Dynaudio Audience series. I even got the 82's as fronts and the 1095 runs them cold.

Dan

[janmike]

So, in a HT environment, is it vital that you stream an equal level of power to all speakers. If I keep the 5 speakers that I currently have for HT (Polk Audio) and sent 200w to the front and 120w to the centre and rears, would I notice a difference as oppossed to sending 200w to all 5. I could add a 3CH (993) or dump the 1080 and grab a 1095.

[Dmantis]

So, in a HT environment, is it vital that you stream an equal level of power to all speakers. If I keep the 5 speakers that I currently have for HT (Polk Audio) and sent 200w to the front and 120w to the centre and rears, would I notice a difference as oppossed to sending 200w to all 5. I could add a 3CH (993) or dump the 1080 and grab a 1095.

Having equal power all the way around works best. You can get away with it if your not that picky on how your overall sound is. I like the same ability everywhere. Most speaker packages are matched perfectly with each other and respond the same way. Having unequal power will bring different dynamic ranges per differnt powered speakers. This is distracting when watching a movie.

Short story on this. I did a full Martin Logan home theater package and the customer just wanted a Proceed 2 channel 250 watt amp running his Prodigys and a 5 channel 125 watt Proceed amp running the center and 4 script rears. When balancing out the system with test tone, all channels set to 75db, the Prodigys stood out the most. The center channel sounded like it was unbalanced with the fronts. Every time a dynamic scene happened, the center didn't keep up.

After a few days playing with this system(we where there a week) we finally got the customer to upgrade the amp driving the center and rears. With all equal power, now the system came alive and nothing seemed out of place. We also used 2 Decent subs in the fron of the room. What a killer sounding system.

So the point of my story is do yourself a favor and use equal power. Alot of people mix and match but I'm not one of them. I own the RMB1095 and I love it. If I needed more channels I would add the Rb1080 as it has the same power output.

Good luck with your upgrade

Dan

[aud19]

I think it's much more dependentant on the speakers you use. If you're using overall efficient speakers and your centre/surrounds are also a lot smaller than your mains you're likely wasting your money on bigger amps for those channels. If you have large, less efficient speakers all around your more likely to notice the difference.

Martin Logan's tend to be both large and inneficient FWIW

[janmike]

Actually I am using Polk Audio all the way round for HT and would probably stay with Polk for HT. As well, when I upgrade the HT speakers, the consistent power will make the transition a lot easier.

[janmike]

Thanks for all the info. I was scanning Blue book pricing and noticed that there were 2 listings for the RB-1095. Did Rotel release to versions of this amp? Thanks.

[RickF]

For over a year I've been using an RB-1080 to run a set of Axiom M80Ti 4 ohm speakers without any problems ... I did have the right side channel go out on the 1080 a few months ago, which had nothing to do with the 4 ohm speakers. The 1080 has ran flawlessly since the fix and both sides dissipate the heat evenly whereas before the right channel always ran quite a bit warmer than the left.

I wanted to try the 1080 for a period of time before getting a 1095 to replace my HK receiver driving the surrounds and fronts and I've been happy enough since the fix that I'm going to go ahead with the 1095 as well as either a 1098 or 1068 for the processing.

As a side note, I'm using the HK AVR635 to drive two center channel speakers (8 & 6 ohms) wired in parallel for a total resistance of 3.43 ohms and again I haven't noticed any problems whatsoever.